So Long as They Die

[Sapphire Blue]

So Long as They Die
Lethal Injections in the United States

Summary

We didn’t discuss pain and suffering.
—William Henry Lloyd, Tennessee Department of Corrections lethal injection protocol committee member1

Compared to electrocution, lethal gas, or hanging, death by lethal injection appears painless and humane, perhaps because it mimics a medical procedure. More palatable to the general public, lethal injection has become the most prevalent form of execution in the United States. Thirty-seven of the thirty-eight death penalty states and the federal government have adopted it; for nineteen states, it is the only legal method of execution.

In the standard method of lethal injection used in the United States, the prisoner lies strapped to a gurney, a catheter with an intravenous line attached is inserted into his vein, and three drugs are injected into the line by executioners hidden behind a wall. The first drug is an anesthetic (sodium thiopental), followed by a paralytic agent (pancuronium bromide), and, finally, a drug that causes the heart to stop beating (potassium chloride).

Although supporters of lethal injection believe the prisoner dies painlessly, there is mounting evidence that prisoners may have experienced excruciating pain during their executions. This should not be surprising given that corrections agencies have not taken the steps necessary to ensure a painless execution. They use a sequence of drugs and a method of administration that were created with minimal expertise and little deliberation three decades ago, and that were then adopted unquestioningly by state officials with no medical or scientific background. Little has changed since then. As a result, prisoners in the United States are executed by means that the American Veterinary Medical Association regards as too cruel to use on dogs and cats.

(snip)

Each of the three drugs, in the massive dosages called for in the protocols, is sufficient by itself to cause the death of the prisoner. Within a minute after it enters the prisoner’s veins, potassium chloride will cause cardiac arrest. Without proper anesthesia, however, the drug acts as a fire moving through the veins. Potassium chloride is so painful that the American Veterinary Medical Association prohibits its use for euthanasia unless a veterinarian establishes that the animal being killed has been placed by an anesthetic agent at a deep level of unconsciousness (a “surgical plane of anesthesia” marked by non-responsiveness to noxious stimuli).

Pancuronium bromide is a neuromuscular blocking agent that paralyzes voluntary muscles, including the lungs and diaphragm. It would eventually cause asphyxiation of the prisoner. The drug, however, does not affect consciousness or the experience of pain. If the prisoner is not sufficiently anesthetized before being injected with pancuronium bromide, he will feel himself suffocating but be unable to draw a breath—a torturous experience, as anyone knows who has been trapped underwater for even a few seconds. The pancuronium bromide will conceal any agony an insufficiently anesthetized prisoner experiences because of the potassium chloride. Indeed, the only apparent purpose of the pancuronium bromide is to keep the prisoner still, saving the witnesses and execution team from observing convulsions or other body movements that might occur from the potassium chloride, and saving corrections officials from having to deal with the public relations and legal consequences of a visibly inhumane execution. At least thirty states have banned the use of neuromuscular blocking agents like pancuronium bromide in animal euthanasia because of the danger of undetected, and hence unrelieved, suffering.

Continued @ http://hrw.org/reports/2006/us0406/1.htm#_Toc133042043

AIUSA Death Penalty Abolition Program: http://www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/index.do

Campaign to End the Death Penalty: http://nodeathpenalty.org/content/index.php

Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation: http://www.mvfr.org/

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: http://www.ncadp.org/

You Can't Pardon a Corpse: http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/deadmantalking/

[Richard Steele]

1. Kicked and recommended.

[porphyrian]

2. Killing is the worst way to say killing is wrong. - n/t

[Sapphire Blue]

3. Yet so many are silent as people continue to be tortured & killed at the hands of the State.

And many are filled w/bloodlust, cheering on the State torturers/killers.

[porphyrian]

7. We're trained to be easily distracted from the obvious...

...and compassion is a painful thing to have with so much horror, especially once you realize that you're complicit in it's severity. That isn't to excuse the behavior, rather it's an attempt to understand it.

[TheBaldyMan]

4. k&r'ed

[troubleinwinter]

5. Shockingly,

I was given this drug:

"Pancuronium bromide is a neuromuscular blocking agent that paralyzes voluntary muscles, including the lungs and diaphragm. It would eventually cause asphyxiation of the prisoner. The drug, however, does not affect consciousness or the experience of pain. If the prisoner is not sufficiently anesthetized before being injected with pancuronium bromide, he will feel himself suffocating but be unable to draw a breath—..."

I felt that a semi-truck had been dropped on my chest. Unable to draw a breath or fight back. Completely, utterly paralized. Breathing tube shoved in. But, yes, I was entirely awake and aware of the pain that followed. Ghastly and unspeakable.

They must at minimum have complete annesthesia. I had none.

[Sapphire Blue]

10. How horrible!

Why were you given this drug w/o anesthesia?

[troubleinwinter]

12. Warning, may not want to read this.

I do not tell the story to women facing chilbirth, as they are frightened and nervous enough, and as far as I've been able to determine, it is an unheard-of practice.

I had to have a caesarean. HMO, Calif. Not emergency, baby not in distress, but they were short of doctors and called in a surgeon from Vandenberg Air Force Base to fill in.

I was given the paralytic drug, they shoved a tube in to breathe for me, then did the caesarean without any painkillers or anesthesia at all. I could not move. I gave myself up to die because the excruciating pain of it was unbearable.

Why this was done, I have no idea. I have NEVER met anyone who has gone through this. That fucker surgeon was laughing and joking thoughout the horror. I was awake and in agony and could not object in any way and had to listen to his joking.

I probably should have sued and gotten an investigation into the sadist. I haven't a clue about the 'anesthetist'.

[Sapphire Blue]

17. troubleinwinter, I'm so sorry that you were put through such an ordeal.

:hug:

[Horse with no Name]

19. You can't sue a military hospital

Unfortunately.
What they did to you was pure torture. Nothing but.
I HOPE that it was due to an inept anesthesiologist forgetting to turn on the Halothane or an error such as this.
To think they did it KNOWINGLY is horrific.
I'm so sorry for your pain. It is unimaginable.:hug:

[troubleinwinter]

20. It WASN'T a military hospital!

It was an HMO (Kaiser Permanente in Calif). They were short staffed, so 'borrowed' a doctor for the day from the Air Force base. Never heard of such a thing :shrug:

Error not using the other drug? I dunno. Maybe so. I only know that the doctor said, "We're going to give you a paralytic drug, and then insert a tube to breathe for you." Next thing, it all happened. Perhaps they had intended an additional drug? I sure as hell hope so, because it was absolutely horrendous. Once the baby was out, they knocked me out to sew me up. You'd think they'd have done that in the first place?

[Horse with no Name]

21. Ahh Kaiser

Add to their list of horror stories from their patients.
Then yes--you should have sued. There has been documented cases where the jury awards have been in the millions for this same thing.
It isn't uncommon to "rent" a doc. Many places do this because of shortages.
I could tell you horror stories about rented docs--there is a usually a reason they find themselves in positions with temporary priveleges and skipping from place to place.
Not to paint all rented docs with the same brush--because there are some genuinely good ones that do it for various legitimate reasons.
Genuinely they give the other drugs (generally Versed, ketamine or propofol) prior to the induction of the paralytic because they are amnesiacs and being paralyzed is something they don't want you to remember and most certainly don't want you to remember being operated on.)
There was a 60-minutes special done on this topic a few years back.
Many of the people who were interviewed had long-term adverse psychological effects from these events.
There simply are no words. I can't imagine your pain.

[troubleinwinter]

22. "amnesiacs"

This makes sense. Thank you for this information that I never knew. It gives me some explanation of the situation (likely was an oversight), rather than thinking they were a bunch of sadistic maniacs.

[Horse with no Name]

23. I would like to think that it was

there could also be the situation that they gave you the amnesiac and it didn't kick in as fast as it normally does.
After you were paralyzed, you weren't able to tell them.
I had this happen with Versed during a bronchoscopy. The Doc ended up maxing out my Versed dose and I was still wide awake.
He couldn't do the procedure because he couldn't knock me out. However, an hour later you couldn't wake me up.

[EstimatedProphet]

6. K&R

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. Barbaric!

:puke:

[mikelewis]

9. Why can't we just give them a lethal dose of Heroine or Coke?

Stoning is an ancient tradition and fully supported by scripture.

[Sapphire Blue]

11. Why not life imprisonment w/o parole?

[demwing]

13. Because its expensive to maintain life

and cheaper to kill

[TahitiNut]

15. That's actually not true.

It costs MORE to impose capital punishment than life-without-parole.

The Cost of Capital Punishment (8/14/02)
By Michael Coles, CPE Staff Economist

Every major cost study has shown capital punishment to be more expensive than an alternative system where life-imprisonment is the maximum sentence. To see why, note that only a small fraction of the cases that start out as capital trials actually result in a death sentence, and only about 10% of those death sentences result in an execution. The 784 inmates executed (as of June 26th, 2002) since 1976 are only a fraction of the roughly 7,000 death sentences in that time, which sprang from an even larger number of trials.

http://www.fguide.org/Bulletin/cappun.htm

[demwing]

16. I don't actually believe that excuse

I'm just filling in the blanks. Guess I should have used quotation marks.

[ulysses]

14. thank you.

:thumbsup:

[Sapphire Blue]

18. Hi, ulysses. You're welcome.

Thank you for caring. :hug:

[InternalDialogue]

24. The death penalty is one of those institutions

that has become part of our societal thinking to a point that its existence is taken as a given, that it's a reasonable option for the resolution of certain crimes. But such thinking ignores a valid discussion on whether it's humane, whether it effectively serves any deterrent value, and whether it really helps crime victims and our society to deal effectively with violent crime. Not to mention the very idea of whether we, as a society, should even consider killing as a reasonable, civilized tool.

On the most basic level, we have to recognize that we're born into a social contract with other humans, grouped in various sets -- humanity, nationality, region, local community -- and that social contract is sometimes codified in law, sometimes not. When someone breaks that social contract, what happens? What should happen?

Beyond the emotional, sometimes vengeful reaction that victims might have, I think civilized society needs a rational, unemotional response. When a violation of the social contract is so severe that we feel the perpetrator cannot live in our society anymore, what do we do? Is it valid to remove that person from society by ending his existence? That may satisfy an emotional need for revenge, and it certainly removes the person from society, but what residue does it leave behind? What legacy do we create when we say that we as a society believe that a valid punishment is the ending of another person's existence? Are we erasing that person because it's the most appropriate punishment? Do we feel that it's a punishment worthy of the crime? Does it ignore the complex issues of whether we really have the right to do so, and if that is the case, when does that discussion take place?

My instinct tells me that more advanced societies would be able to seek closure from violent crime by effectively banishing from society perpetrators, not by inflicting another violent act. Ironically, it was earlier societies that may have taken the most humane and thoughtful action, banishing their criminals to other lands, though even a few hundred years ago there were really no uninhabited lands to send criminals to. Given the understanding that there's no uninhabited physical place outside our society to which we can banish people, what are we as a society willing to accept as substitution for banishment? Lifetime incarceration? Extradition to another country, leaving a different society to deal with the criminal? Ending the person's life on earth by killing him?

The death penalty is not a deterrent, it is not painless (on many levels), and it institutionalizes a behavior that, ironically, would earn the death penalty if prosecuted by an external party. I think it taps into a very primal urge to kill those who would kill us. And that, at its most basic level, prevents us from evolving past tribal politics and toward a higher state. The excellence of a society should be judged not by how well it accommodates the lives of those people who follow its rules, but by how it deals with those who break them.

[Ms. Clio]

25. I had read about this a couple of years ago, and did not understand why my pets died so painlessly

in comparison, since I've had several of my elderly sick pets euthanized over the past decade. So heartbreaking every time, but the whole process has usually been very swift and peaceful.

This is so dreadful, such an atrocity, and more people need to know.

[ChiciB1]

26. I'm Pretty Medically Challenged... However I Can Say This....

In the last couple of years I was forced to have two animals put to sleep, one my 18 year-old-cat when her urinary tract infection could not be cured and her kidneys were shutting down. The other was our 16 year-old German Shepherd. We took each one to the Vet at the designated time, but since my husband had made each one their own "pine box" that I lined with fur for burial, we had the Vet come out to our vehicle to administer the medication. Only TWO shots were given though, the first was to knock them out, which we got to witness and MAKE SURE the animal was unresponsive (to the best of my human knowledge) and then the next shot given directly into the heart.

Even I would NEVER let an animal be put down without being able to WITNESS the process. I do think I have a very good Vet, SHE seems to be very humane and runs around in her bare feet in her office. She's actually younger than us, but cares about animals a lot. If you find a wild animal she will "spay" or "neuter" the animal as long as YOU pay for the rabies and distemper shots. That's fair enough for me, but I usually end up keeping the "wild ones" anyway!

I'm totally against the Death Penalty and always have been!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

27. I've always found the death penalty to be barbaric K&R

This just assures me I was right.

[Gwerlain]

28. For me the point is not how bad the method is...

it's that killing people is unjustifiable.

Why do we kill people
who kill people
to show people
that killing people
is wrong?

[MuseRider]

29. Thank you.

I don't know why I reacted like I did to this but it made me cry. Well, I guess I do know but it did surprise me to react so strongly.

As someone who was a critical care nurse I have always been skeptical that this was a painless procedure. I hate the death penalty in all forms, painful or not.